Lecture Hall Back-Channeling

emmastory writes "The New York Times is running a story on the phenomenon of lecture hall back-channeling - now that many conferences and universities have wireless access, some people discuss lectures via instant message or weblog as they happen. Although the article quotes an instructor at NYU, I haven't seen much of this in lectures I've attended there. I would guess it varies from department to department, but laptops aren't yet as common in classes as one might think. Either way, some people consider the practice rude, others consider it progress, and good arguments can be made on either side."

Comments

Somebody get to work

[TopShelf]

One upside that can result from this is a refinement in questions that get asked of the speaker at the end of a presentation. Obvious ones can be resolved within the back-channelers, while insightful ones could rise to the top.

Heck, someone should develop a wireless /-style solution to accept potential questions and have the back-channelers rate them during the lecture, a la /. Interviews. For larger speeches where the number of attendees is high and the time for Q&A is limited, this could greatly improve the quality of the session...

Re:Somebody get to work

[altp]

This suggestion could also help the problem where people are afraid to ask questions alloud. If the system allows for anonymous questions and votes, basic concepts that students are having trouble grasping can be addressed again, that were previously being over looked by teachers until test time.

Our school won't install WiFi...

[phr00tcake]

academic integrity is their reasoning behind it. Of course all my friends sharing answers through SMS have no complaints...

Discussing the *lecture*?

[Patik]

Here at RPI, where laptops have been required for five years now and ethernet/wireless is readily available, there is a lot of in-lecture IMing and conversation -- but none of it really pertains to the lecture. Most students who do this are too busy doing personal browsing and conversing to pay attention to the lecture.

Meeting Back Channel

[Snot Locker]

Several of us at work have used an IM back channel during conference calls and meetings. Usually its a MST3K-like commentary on the goings on. It's a good BS-meter for a meeting -- the more sarcasm on the channel, the more likely the meeting is utter BS.

Rude? Probably... but anything on the IM back channel was in our heads anyway, so perhaps it's just good therapy :-)

Hydra and Conference Sessions

[DaRat]

I've seen this sort of lecture discussion during conference sessions using Hydra (a collaborative editor available for Mac OS X). A group of us ended up having a parallel discussion about the conference topic while the session was ongoing and at the same time the session moderator used Hydra to take notes.

The process was quite interesting and helpful for me since it allowed me to interact with other participants and gain new perspectives on the session topic.

I could see how a lecturer might not appreciate Hydra, blogging or anything else like it since it could basically be a way to silently pass notes, chat, and otherwise not pay attention to the lecture. But, there isn't much the lecturer can really do other than making it important to listen and pay attention.

Re:Doesn't sound like a great idea

[Phillip2]

"now that many conferences and universities have wireless access, some people discuss lectures via instant message or weblog as they happen."

"And that's a good thing? Don't students have a hard enough time paying attention to lectures? I was a student once; I know!"

I've certainly known it happen at many conferences. People will often look up the website of the speaker, try out their tools, look up their papers while they are speaking. A very good thing.

Of course others do spend lots of time checking their email, or doing other work. But this is the nature of the beast. At many conferences most delegates are not interested in all the talks, but you often do not know whether you are or not, till a couple of minutes in. So now the choice is between listening to something you are not interested in, or email. A improvement from when you could listen, or fall asleep....

Phil

MUD Xperience

[alephnull42]

In a former company (dot.com that went dot.boom) our tech department included a bunch of hackers (gee, whadda surprise) who had played a lot of MUDs during their college days.

Since we were spread out across several floors & buildings, we had a telnet chat server running, basically doing IM functionality.

We got into the habit of holding tech-only meetings via this server, with following benefits:

- Less waffle, it's harder to digress on a keyboard

- People actually thinking before "saying" something

- Instant meeting minutes (a GREAT bonus)

Unfortunately, this only works if ppl can actually type more than 5 words per minute, hence I don't forsee this reaching the mainstream anytime soon.

Only very few of the managers understood the benefits, the natural assumptions was geeks+network+server = "this can't be work, they must be playing"

did this

[f0rtytw0]

In one of my classes the professor would bring in a wireless access point so people with laptops could use them online during the class. She also brought in a few wireless cards that people could borrow. The point of doing this was to see how this affected the class. At the end of the semester she asked people who had been using laptops regularly what effect it had on them. I for one found it distracting at times since I would be browsing the web or chatting. But the nature of the class was to talk about current issues in the tech world and such so reading slashdot was kind of like doing classwork anyway =)

Laptops In Classrooms

[Thunderstruck]

At the University of South Dakota (USD, not in San Diego!) School of Law, most classrooms are outfitted with electrical outlets and network jacks at each seat. This enables even folks with weak batteries to make use of our laptops for note taking et. al. The most amazing adaptation this has caused, however, is not among the students but rather the professors.

Our faculty has in recent years discovered how to pace lectures by listening to the sound of keystrokes in the audience. If it gets too quiet they can talk more quickly, too much keyboard noise and it's time to pause.

Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

A comp sci class I was taking last year had wireless access, and the instructor was enthusiastic about students using laptops during lecture. Since all of her lectures were available in powerpoint, you could follow along on your laptop without having to strain to see the projection screen up front. Furthermore, she set up an AIM account so that you could ask her those "obvious" questions that people are often too embarassed to ask mid lecture, but are more comfortable asking with a degree of anonymity. It was funny, because sometimes she would briefly mention a concept that everyone pretended to understand, and you would hear the speakers on her laptop chime like crazy as about 30 new IM's flowed in. In my case, this greatly improved the quality of the lecture, and I learned quite a bit more than I would have with the standard paper and pencil, raise your hand approach. Granted, there was a fair degree of screwing off as some students found their computers to be more of an attractive nuisance than a study aid.

It seems that in the CS and EE classes that I take, the profs are pretty glad to see students taking an active role in the lectures rather than just sitting and obsorbing information. However in my general requirement classes (sociology, history, blah blah blah) I've found that instructors HATE the concept of deviating from the time-honored teaching methods. Pulling your laptop out in class seems to get the same reaction as if you pulled out an assault rifle.

Re:Been There, Done That

[fallingsilver]

A class I took briefly did something similar. Students could post questions on a messageboard during the class, which TAs could then answer. We could also rate the lecture (anonymously) as it proceeded, and when it reached a certain threshold, a bell would sound indicating to the lecturer that his lecture was a) supremely boring or b) supremely interesting. I found it quite a novel concept :)

He would also call on people in the class to answer questions, and did this by randomly pulling a name from the database of students, and displaying the name in huge letters on the massive projection screen at the front of the lecture hall. Slouching at the back of the room hoping to avoid being spotted and questioned? Completely ineffectual!

*lecture*?

[fantomas]

I've heard some fairly good arguments to suggest that the lecture itself is a mediaeval form of presenting information and is now out of date as a way of transforming knowledge. What do students gain by sitting listening to the great master spout his wisdom?

Several lecturers I know have moved to providing their "lecture" online (e.g. hypertext document) and use the allocated lecture time for a follow up workshop, requiring the students to have already read and considered the "lecture" and to come along with some sort of academic response. Seems a far more effective use of teaching time to me, far more likely to be of value to students.

Re:*lecture*?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Several lecturers I know have moved to providing their "lecture" online (e.g. hypertext document) and use the allocated lecture time for a follow up workshop, requiring the students to have already read and considered the "lecture" and to come along with some sort of academic response. Seems a far more effective use of teaching time to me, far more likely to be of value to students."

Agreed. I took a chemistry course like this several years ago. This course had reputation for being extremely difficult and you heard scary stories about it around the lunchroom table. The people who actually did the work before the lecture (including myself) did reasonably well (70-90%, and 80+ was a flippin' good mark for that class.) The people who fell behind on the readings were in a pit too deep to possibly climb out. They dropped, failed or barely squeaked by.

Of all the courses I have ever taken for anything, I think this chem one was the one where I learned the most. I liked the format because it really causes the information to stick in your head. Also, it weeds out the people who are not committed and really forces everyone else to actually learn. Four years later I was helping my brother learn the same stuff and I could correct or guide him on the material from memory because I remembered it.

RIT IT Wifi Everywhere

[LogicX]

I attend Rochester Institute of Technology, in the Information Technology department.
Our entire building (three floors, just recently expanded) is covered with 802.11b connectivity. Many of the students, including myself bring laptops to class. Sure, some kids abuse them, and surf or play games during lecture (I've been known to do the former during a very boring Intro to System Administration 1 class), but there are some excellent uses.

I think the best is checking on something taught in class. More than once in that System Administration class the teacher has mentioned something, I doubted it, googled for it, and either learned it to be true (there was a use for the sticky bit to keep programs memory resident, but in current linux the sticky bit's purpose has changed), or false (Windows 2K does NOT require NTFS to do software RAID -- you can use FAT just as easily). This is an excellent way to reinforce information being taught. Had I not had my laptop in class I would've gotten sidetracked, forgotten about it, and never learned the truth about these and other things.

In another class I took, Network Administration, the teacher, Bill Stackpole, would often take advantage of those in class with laptops. If he brought up a topic and wasn't sure about something he mentioned, he'd encourage those of us with laptops to research it quickly, and let the class know the correct technical data. If a student would ask him a question in class that he couldn't answer, he'd encourage anyone with a laptop to help out and find the answer. From even those few excellent uses of wireless connectivity in the classroom I feel its been a great addition to the technology classes at RIT. If someone is going to goof off using a laptop, then they are the same person who was going to goof off doodling in their notebook, nothing lost, nothing gained.
I could go on and on about the times the Wifi access has saved my ass in one way or another in the GCCIS building. (and maybe I will later) Come out of the wood-work RIT students -- I know you have more stories!

Tutorials in the Humanities

[Vagary]

That's been part of the teaching style of the humanities for a long time now: go read this paper or book by some smart dead dude (readings), then I'll tell you what I think about it (lecture), then we can discuss (tutorial).

It's pretty obvious that a lecture can be converted to a meta-reading and put online, but the big question right now is whether tutorials can also be as effective online. Of course, never underestimate a university student's desire to be passive: many would rather snooze through a two-hour lecture than spend that time reading. And tutorials at anything below an advanced level are pretty dismal, at least at my alma matter: two students team up with the professor to mock the one student who will actually voice a minority opinion, while the rest snooze.

If the Internet can fix any of this, I'm all for it.

The Laptop Dilemna

[MacGod]

I used to use a laptop in class, but found it ultimately more trouble than it was worth. It worked fine for the English elective (waste of time) or the History of Science courses I took, but not for my core Math & Science classes.

Basically, by the time you copy out a diagram or complex formula, it will take you so long (especially if you have to switch to Symbol to make half the characters), that it's simply not worth it.

Now, some profs distribute their lectures in PDFs/Word Documents/HTML files, which makes it much easier, but then many students just download the lecture notes and skip class, which professors tend to hate.

I think a great solution would be for all students to have wireless laptops, and have the prof stream the lecture to students as he goes. That way, there's an incentive to go to class still, and laptops become a worthwile tool.

I'm thinking along the lines of a custom program that feeds one page at a time into a PDF or something.

Alternately, documents with blanks spots to be filled in during the lecture can also work.

Or, finally, something like the Mimio would also be very cool.